Though I once checked email in a room where others watched Elf (2003), I have otherwise not seen a Will Ferrell performance since his 2000 turn as George W. Bush (“Strategery!”) on Saturday Night Live. Those wishing to relitigate the merits of Anchorman (2004) or Step Brothers (2008) will need to look elsewhere. What I can tell you is that Ferrell’s new TV project, the Netflix golf “comedy” The Hawk, is easily the worst show of 2026 and one of the stupidest I’ve seen in years. Whatever one thinks of the mugging man-child’s brand of humor, this is one approach shot that gets nowhere near the hole.
Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, a former world No. 1 golfer reduced to hacking it on the minor-league Korn Ferry Tour. Presumably inspired by John Daly, the real-life PGA’s erstwhile lovable renegade, Lonnie is a beer-guzzling, obscenity-spewing fan favorite well into his athletic dotage. Observing his comeback attempt produces two questions, one narrative and the other aesthetic: Can the ex-champ make it back to the top tour and capture a U.S. Open, thus completing the career Grand Slam? And, more importantly, can audiences be made, on at least two or three occasions, to chuckle?
The answer to that second question is a firm “no.” Indeed, watching Netflix’s latest effort, I found myself yearning for an old-fashioned laugh track, if for no other reason than to grasp where the jokes were supposed to be. Like far too many streaming comedies these days (Time Bandits, The Decameron — I could go on and on), The Hawk belongs to its genre mostly on the basis of being absurd. Case in point: In the first few episodes alone, Lonnie plays air guitar with a golf club and sports a frilly red thong. No human being will crack so much as a smile at these gestures, but they are mindlessly silly, so in they go.
Ferrell receives little help from his costars, a collection of misfits seemingly chosen on the basis of their unpleasantness. Molly Shannon, unfunny in the best of circumstances, plays Lonnie’s estranged wife as an overbearing scold given to complaints that golfers “were all squirted out of the same polite white-boy tube.” Jimmy Tatro, as Lonnie’s son, Lance, is a one-note parody of “wellness” liberalism — the kind of man who says, of his own professional success, “We’ve been manifesting it up.” Keith David, a voice actor of no small talent, does promising work as Lonnie’s caddie but, alas, falls over dead eight minutes into the pilot. His replacement, played by comedian Fortune Feimster, is a grimly vulgar sop to Middle America as understood by Hollywood. The 46-year-old may well be the least amusing TV sidekick of the decade.
Letting The Hawk speak for itself is the best revenge I can think of for the hours I spent watching it. “Let’s go for a ride,” Lonnie says to his golf ball, borrowing a gag from the infinitely superior Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore (1996). “What’s his Instagram?” Lance’s fiancée, Natalie (Katelyn Tarver), asks upon hearing the name of 20th-century intellectual Gore Vidal. “You know what’s better than 68?” Feimster’s character quips salaciously. Reader, I’ll let you guess the “punchline.”
None of this is funny. More perplexing still, Netflix must have known it wasn’t funny but chose to release The Hawk anyway. The answer to that mystery lies partly in the multiyear “first-look” deal struck between the streaming giant and Ferrell’s production company in 2020. Someone at Netflix clearly wants to be in the Will Ferrell business. Yet the basic laws of the streaming economy are to blame, too. Put simply, the subscription model fairly demands that shows as bad as this one continue to be made.
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Here’s how it works: In order to keep us all as members, Netflix and its ilk must release, on a regular basis, a smash hit on the order of Stranger Things, a popular prestige series or two (e.g., The Crown), and a flock of genre shows with a dedicated following (e.g., Wednesday). Yet they must also produce a mountain of gap-filling nonsense for the rubes — what TV Insider’s Matt Roush once called “trans-fat TV,” summoning its anti-nutritional value. The Hawk is a nearly perfect example of a series designed for that final category. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to fill a “what’s new” slot on the app for a weekend.
That such shows travel in groups should thus be no surprise. Last year in this space, I reviewed Apple TV’s Stick, another hideously bad golf snoozer with a washed-up lead (Owen Wilson). Someone, somewhere, is surely pitching an equivalent project (Putter!) starring Amber Tamblyn or Shia LaBeouf. One risks accusations of elitism for calling these programs what they are, but so be it. I am indeed too good for The Hawk and its television kin. And so are you.
Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the Washington Examiner magazine.